AN ACADEMIC BOOK REVIEW OF DENYS HAY’S
THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE IN ITS HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
David G. TerrellMay 28, 2010Denys Hay,
The Italian Renaissance in its Historical Background
, xii + 218 pp., 24 ill., 2 mapsCambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1961.Denys Hay’s book appeared in the early 1960s, when social history and its proponentshad begun to transform western historiography. History, particularly medieval and “early modernhistory,” was still much influenced by document-centric inquiry, still insisting on definingunique periods, and still tending to think in terms of national contexts.
Not many years later, postmodernism’s relativism would storm and rage against the “progress view of history” which,in Renaissance terms, meant Burckhardt’s book,
Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy.
It isduring this interregnum that Hay writes his book, purposely intending “to provoke an unbiasedand fresh appeal of a phase in Italian and European history which has, more than most such‘periods’, suffered from traditional and stereotyped treatment, above all by being dealt with asstatic and solid.”
Hay acknowledges that previous historians have suffered because of the large volume of detailed critical work already extant. Any historian, he asserts—except perhaps the most brilliant, short-sighted, or vain—would be daunted by the effort necessary to master anyreasonable fraction of Renaissance history.
Because of this “elephant in the room,” there is not a
1 Ernst Breisach,
Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern,
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983),356-357.2 Denys Hay,
The Italian Renaissance in its Historical Background,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1961), x.3 David G. Terrell, "HIST535 K001 SPR 10 Discussion Board (Re: Historiography),"
American Military University,
(May 7, 2010, https://online.apus.edu/educator/student/threadcontent.cgi?lb1753*1048044*mpos=4&spos=0&slt=cSaP0fPMgMDQs*hist535k001spr10*dg003*0002*1*reply*Threaded**(accessed May 22, 2010)). Hay, 5.
2David G. Terrelllarge corpus of fully-informed, completely holistic discussions of Renaissance history; and thosediscussions that have occurred settled upon narrowly-defined and more easily mastered topics.Hay’s beginning, an overview of Renaissance historiography, classifies previous histories intofour binary groupings: Rankean (political, social and economic)-historiographic; Rankean-methodological; Cultural-historiographic; and Cultural-methodological.
Hay tells us that limited by their scope and preferences, historians wrote these four typesof Renaissance history independently until the 1960s, when historians began to synthesize andintegrate their Renaissance-related historical perspectives. This reviewer believes the impetusdriving the change came from the fresh historical perspective provided by the
Annales
historians,who launched more inclusive and analytical histories than previous schools preferred—or werecapable of producing.
Before leaving his Preface, one knows where Hay stands with regard to his subject and itshistory. In quick succession, he explicitly positions himself within the literature by claimingvariance with Burckhardt’s transitionalism while mentioning John Addington Symonds’
Renaissance in Italy
with approbation. Hay asserts the possibility that a single general history of the period is possible, since “…the Renaissance is the last epoch when one man can hope to havea direct view of most of the sources. … (as) … I here try to view the history of Italy from theearly fourteenth century to the mid-sixteenth.”
Hay then introduces his subject as one should—who intends to expound upon a periodknown for its love of Aristotelian and Platonic thought—he sets forth his axioms and defines histerms. His three axioms are: there was a “Renaissance” between the approximate years 1350 and
4 Hay, 5. Terrell.5 Terrell.6 Hay, x-xii.
3David G. Terrell1700; this period began in Italy and later affected the rest of Europe; and, the period isidentifiable through a “difference in the style of living between the Renaissance and both whatcame before and what came after.”
In the subsequent chapters, Hay sets about providing evidence supporting the axioms heasserts. His chosen method is to integrate the Renaissance’s cultural history with the long extant political and social histories of Italy, drawing no distinction between Italian history and thehistory of the Renaissance in Italy. He acknowledges the difficulty of synchronizing the two,labeling the period as “one of those paradoxical epochs where cultural change seems to be out of step with economic change.” Interestingly, he also recognizes the existence of a hidden historyrelated to the commoner; and when he asserts that the defining cultural innovations that changedthe Europeans’ styles of living were formed “in the castle rather than the cottage,” and requiredcenturies to finally disperse to “simple men and women,” he foresees the need for, and predictsthe rise of, feminist and gendered Renaissance history.
Hay then turns to the conceptualization and emergence of the term “Renaissance” and thevalidity of the notion of its existence. He asserts the existence of the Renaissance, as a definable period of history, based on the spread of new styles in art, architecture, letters, and politics withinItaly; and, the derivative and relatively rapid adoption of these styles throughout Europe. At thesame time, however, he is in critical disagreement with those historians who describe theRenaissance as a transitional period between and dark medieval world and the modern era.
In particular, Hay uses the following points as evidence for accepting Renaissance as a period
sui generis
and dismissing the idea of its transitional role. Politically, the fifteenth and
7 Hay, 1-2, 7.8 Hay, 8, 3-5.9 Hay, 10-14.
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